But as the Bishop is not the sole preacher and instructer of the people, the Presbyters having an equal right with him in this respect, the Doctor asks, 'By what rule of propriety should he be characterized by symbols which are foreign from his appropriate functions? By symbols which describe exactly the functions of those ministers whom, we are taught, they do not represent ?'

The reason is obvious enough. Although a Bishop and Presbyter, in respect of preaching and instructing, are on a footing; yet as the latter derives his authority to preach from the former, and exercises it under his control, the Bishop receives from this circumstance a character of superiority, which justifies the restriction of the term the Angel, and renders the symbol of a star applicable to him, kar εox, by way of eminence.

Still our difficulties are not at an end. 'Any plain reader,' says the Doctor, ‘will observe, on a slight inspection of these Epistles, that they address the Angel of a particular Church in the singular or plural number indifferently. Thus to the Angel of the Church in Smyrna, the Redeemer says, I know thy works, and tribulation and poverty, but thou art rich-Fear nothing of those things which thou shalt suffer. Behold the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried ; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto the death; and I will give thee a crown of life.

'We ask any dispassionate man, whether all this is not addressed to the Angel in Smyrna? Thou, says the text, thou, the Angel, shalt suffer. Thus saith the text, the devil shall cast into prison some of you--you who are signified by the Angel. However, be THOU faithful unto the death; i. e. although thou shouldst die for being faithful; and I will give thee, (whom? certainly the persecuted,) I will give thee a crown of life." This the Doctor thinks is full proof that the Angel of the Church means its ministry.

I do not deny that amongst the things written to the Angels, some instructions are mingled, in which the whole Church are concerned. But the Doctor should consider, that addresses begun with one, are sometimes diverted to many. Thus, in the fourth chapter to the Philippians, the Apostle begins, Therefore, my brethren, dearly beloved and longed for, my joy and crown, so stand fast in the LORD, my dearly beloved. And I entreat thee also, true yoke fellow, help those women which laboured with me in the Gospel. Again, in the second Epistle of Timothy, St. Paul says, The LORD JESUS CHRIST be with THY spirit. Grace be with you.

Now, in the words of the Doctor, 'I ask any dispassionate man, whether this Epistle is not addressed to Timothy ?-with THY spirit-Grace be with you, i. e, (according to the Doctor's mode of reasoning) with you who are signified by Timothy. Again, I ask, whether the Apostle does not address the Philippians in a body?-My brethren, dearly beloved? And whether

he does not immediately divert his discourse from many to one? I entreat THEE also, true yoke fellow, i. e. thee who art signified by the Philippians. A new and curious mode of interpreting!

The fact is, that these sudden transitions are frequent in the Scriptures, and also in the Greek and Latin classics, particularly in the Greek. The writers thought that they contributed to strength, and often to beauty.

But further: The Doctor has run himself into a difficulty here, to which he does not seem to have adverted. If thou and you respect the same object, as you indubitably relates to the whole Church, both clergy and laity, it follows that the Angel means both clergy and laity; and, consequently, the laity are the messengers of GOD as well as the clergy; and that is in effect saying, there are no laity, but all are clergymen.

Now to show some gross sophisms into which our opponent has run.

Potter and Cyprian say, "When what is said relates to the people, the style is altered, the plural number is then used."

This gloss,' says the Doctor, 'is contrary, 1. To the plain and natural construction of the Prophet's words; which, using sometimes the singular, and sometimes the plural number when speaking of the Angel, leads us to a simple and easy solution, by supposing that he employs that term in a collective sense of the whole ministry of the Church.'

But the plural number in the text refers to the whole Church, both clergy and laity. This is evident from the words-The devil shall cast some of you into prison, that YE may be tried; and YE shall have tribulation ten days. Now, unless the Doc-tor can prove that none of the laity were cast into prison, he fails most egregiously. He assumes the fact, and then accommodates himself with the wished for conclusion. This is the petitio principii, or mere begging the question.

He goes on- The Epistle is written to the Angel in Smyrna. Angel, say they, always signifies a single person, and never a number of men; and yet they say, that of this very Epistle to the Angel, part is addressed directly to the people, who are a Society or number of men.'

What they say is very true, and perfectly consistent. The Epistle is addressed to the Angel; and yet through this medium the whole Church is occasionally addressed. The Angel in the singular-the Church in the plural. Here the Doctor mistakes the question. Our position is, the Angel signifies a single person, and that when he is addressed in the singular number, the people are not intended; but when the plural is used, the people are intended. But the Doctor's position, to make us inconsistent, must be that we say-In an Epistle addressed to the Angel, who represents a number, the Angel never represents a number. But there is not the slightest inconsistency in saying, that in an Epistle addressed to an individual, the community of which he is the head, may occasionally be addressed.

This is the sophism called ignoratio elenchi; or a mistake of the question.

4. The Doctor observes with respect to the titles Star and Angel, that they are perfectly synonymous. Now,' says he, 'both these symbols depict official character;' [Angel is no symbol;] therefore,' says he, under the term Angel, the ministry and the people cannot be distinctly addressed.' Very true -this is just our doctrine. With whom is the Doctor contending?

But the Doctor here very arbitrarily rejects the people, and holds fast the ministry. The text, however, is equally applicable to both. His restriction is, therefore, inadmissible.

5. He observes, 'If the Angel is the collective body of the ministers upon whom the persecution was to fall, then the exhortations, Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer-Be thou faithful unto the death; and the promise, I will give thee a crown of life, are in harmony with the premonition that the devil should cast some of them into prison. The anticipation of evil is softened by the assurance of support.'

All this is assumption: it has not yet been proved that the Angel is the collective body of the ministers; on the contrary, it has been fully proved that he is not. The sorrow and the consolation go one way-to the Bishop, the ministry, and the people, support is promised. To the Bishop, Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer. Be thou faithful unto the death, and I will give thee a crown of life. To the ministers and people the same reward must necessarily follow the same virtues. If fidelity in the Bishop deserved reward, it must necessarily deserve it in the ministers and people. It is not, therefore, repeated.

C

To conclude, in the words of the Doctor, mutatis mutandis, [the needful changes made,] We do not feel conscious of any arrogance in supposing, that after the reader, who is solicitous to know the truth, shall carefully have examined and compared the reasonings now submitted to him, and allowed them their due force on his mind, he will coincide with us in the opinion, that the angels and stars in the context before us, do not signify a collective minister, but single persons of distinction and eminence in the Church.'

I shall now inquire, whether the primitive writers afford us any proofs of Bishops being in fact settled in the seven Churches, when St. John wrote the Revelations. This I take to be the great advantage we have over you, that we can establish our sense of those passages of Scripture which are in dispute between us, by an appeal to the fathers. For this mode of settlement you have no great affection, but generally underrate it as much as you can with any show of decency; and this too at the expense of putting it out of your power to establish the canon of Scrip ture, and the change of the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the week.

1. We are assured by Irenæus, who was Polycarp's disciple, that he (Polycarp) was ordained Bishop of Smyrna by the Apostle John. Eusebius also bears testimony to this fact.

2. There can be no doubt that at the time the Revelations were written, there was a Bishop presiding over the Church of Ephesus. It has already been observed, that in the second century, Polycrates was Bishop of Ephesus, and that seven of his own race had preceded him; so that in all probability, one of them was the immediate successor of Timothy. And we learn from Ignatius, that when he wrote his Epistles, which was about twelve years after St. John's return from Patmos, Onesimus was Bishop of Ephesus. He was therefore either the first or second Bishop from Timothy; and, it has been observed, that the council of Chalcedon reckoned twenty-seven Bishops from him down to their time. This is surely sufficient evidence for Ephesus.

3. When Ignatius wrote his Epistle to the Philadelphians, they had a Bishop, to whom he recommends obedience.

4. Not long after St. John's time, Sagaris was Bishop of Laodicea. Polycrates mentions him in his Epistle to Victor, as having suffered martyrdom in past times; "that is," says Potter,. "when Servius Paulus was Proconsul of Asia, as we learn from Melito's tract about Easter, who was himself Bishop of Sardis in the reign of Marcus Aurelius. So that very near the time we are speaking of, we find a Bishop in Laodicea; and not long after this another in Sardis."z

Since then there is evidence sufficient to convince an impartial mind, that there were Bishops presiding over the four Churches we have named, we reasonably infer that there were also over the other three. And when you add to this, that Irenæus, Clemens of Alexandria, Eusebius, Ambrose, Jerome, Austin, and several others, accounted the seven Angels so many diocesan Bishops, surely there is enough to establish our sense of the Epistles addressed to the Churches of the Lesser Asia. Could you produce any of the fathers asserting that the Angels do not mean the Bishops of those Churches, but the whole ministry, we should then think that we had some. thing serious to contend with. But till you do produce something of this kind, we shall certainly think that we have sufficient reason to conclude, that the seven Angels represent the seven Bishops of the Proconsular Asia.

After Dr. Mason's specious defence of the notion, that the Angels of the seven Churches stand for the ministry of those Churches, the few observations you have made are not of sufficient consequence to deserve notice. Your notion of the Angel being the Moderator, if a ministry be not designated, has been shown to be utterly irreconcileable with the text; and your illustration of the notion, from the city of Edinburgh being but one

X IREN. Lib. iii. c. 3.

Z POTTER'S Church Government, p. 148.

y

Eccles. Hist. Lib. iii. c. 36.

parish, and Trinity Church having several chapels, which are all under one Rector, have been proved to be not at all in point. You have, however, one very unwarrantable assertion. You say, that I appear to be sensible of the insufficiency of Scripture evidence upon this point; and therefore have recourse to the fathers. This is not the first instance of your asserting what you had no right to assert. There is not a syllable in my ninth Letter, which indicates the smallest doubt in my mind of the sufficiency of the Scripture evidence; but I always confirm our sense of that evidence, by showing that it agrees with the testimonies of the primitive writers, who, living near the times of the Apostles, must be much better judges of the facts than we can possibly be. When a man wants to know the form of Church government in the second century, if he is in possession of common sense, he will have recourse to the records of that century. And if he finds it uniformly either Episcopal or Presbyterian, he will say, unless this uniformity proceeded from general consent, expressed by a general council, it must have had an apostolic source. But finding that no such council met in that century, and that all the writers agree in respect to the point of government, he would think that man predestined not to believe that rejects such evidence. Nay, he would think that he must, in order to be consistent, give up the evidence of testimony altogether. For who can have recourse to it, after saying that the writers of the first three or four centuries did not know what was the constitution of the primitive Church? or, what amounts to the same thing, that it is doubtful how far these fathers are credible witnesses-how far their assertion is founded on authentic records, and not on conjecture? When a man talks at this rate, it answers very little purpose to reason with him.

'But,' you say, 'supposing that their assertion is founded on authentic records, it still remains to be ascertained in what sense they use the word Bishop.'

What a strange observation! When Episcopalians use the word Bishop, it still remains to be ascertained in what sense they use it! When they use it, who upon earth would suppose they mean it in a Presbyterian sense? If diocesan episcopacy prevailed in the second century, would not of course all the writers of that age talk like Episcopalians? Were I, in the course of a sermon, to use the word Bishop, would any body, knowing to what Church I belong, suppose I meant a congregational Bishop? But were I, in the sermon, to declare in what the powers of a Bishop consisted, could there be any possibility of entertaining a doubt? Were I to say with Cyprian, that he is at the head of the priesthood—that it is his province to ordainthat he is the superior of the clergy-that he has the chief power of the keys-that it belongs to him to confirm, to excommunicate, and to restore; would any human being suppose that I was speaking of a congregational Bishop? Were I to say with Ignatius, that Presbyters must be subject to their Bishop;